A Showman And His Showcase

By MATTHEW GUREWITSCH

Published: March 17, 2002

LAVISH in scale and unashamedly theatrical.'' This, in a nutshell, is the style associated with the star designer and director Franco Zeffirelli as he himself defined it in his autobiography 16 years ago. He stages opera the way De Mille filmed ''The Ten Commandments,'' and he drenches movies in the pathos of opera.

Some artists are content to please the few. Mr. Zeffirelli's mission is to reach the many. Everyone loves him, the saying goes, except the critics. And he has said the same. ''I've made my career without the support of the critics, thank God,'' he told Opera News 20 years ago, after the premiere of his epic production of Puccini's ''Bohème'' at the Metropolitan Opera. ''I rely only on my profession, my honesty and my audience.''

Those who were there that night report that a solo bow by Mr. Zeffirelli generated a noisier ovation than those for the mesmerizing Mimi of Teresa Stratas or the conducting of James Levine. The critics, red in tooth and claw, left the show for dead. Yet to this day it, along with similarly conceived Zeffirelli extravaganzas, remains the Met's bread and butter. They are sure-fire tourist attractions pretty much regardless of casting.

Once revolutionary, Mr. Zeffirelli's essentially traditional aesthetic has yielded in many self-consciously progressive quarters (notably in Germany, England and France) to iconoclastic approaches. At the Met, his conservative style has set the tone for the standard repertory for decades. The Met, meanwhile, remains a premier Zeffirelli showcase.

On Thursday, with the season premiere of Verdi's ''Falstaff,'' the Met turns back the clock to Mr. Zeffirelli's company debut, in 1964, three seasons before the move to Lincoln Center (and his inaugural production of Samuel Barber's ''Antony and Cleopatra''). The conductor in 1964, Leonard Bernstein, was likewise new to the Met. ''We had a ball,'' Mr. Zeffirelli, 79, said recently from his home in Rome, speaking elegant and accurate English in a light, lilting baritone.

Back then the critics, too, loved Mr. Zeffirelli. The reviews were glowing. ''A milestone in the history of operatic production in this city,'' ran a typical assessment, in The New York Herald Tribune. ''Suddenly the Metropolitan has come to life again, and along with it the whole creaky institution known as opera.''

By this point, the hallelujah chorus for Mr. Zeffirelli had been swelling for some time. In 1960, his fiery ''Romeo and Juliet'' for the Old Vic in London -- daringly led by unknowns, among them the doll-like Judi Dench -- was hailed by Kenneth Tynan, juggernaut of the British critics, as ''a revelation, perhaps a revolution.''

Still, what opera production survives for 38 years? Truth to tell, the Met had planned to retire the Zeffirelli ''Falstaff'' this season in favor of a new production, conducted by Mr. Levine and starring the majestically witty Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel as Shakespeare's knavish old knight in love. But one look at the proposal by a prominent team that Joseph Volpe, general manager of the Met, declines to name, was enough to convince him that it was time for ''a 'Rosenkavalier' '': Met shorthand for a restoration of a production deemed to be worn out only in the physical sense.

''Now, it may be said by those great minds in the opera world, 'Can't the Met do any better than this?' '' Mr. Volpe said, striking a rhetorical note worthy of Falstaff himself. ''My answer is: 'We don't want to do better than this. As far as I'm concerned, this is the best.' ''

So sets are being rebuilt from scratch. The final scene, never before executed to Mr. Zeffirelli's specifications, will be fully realized for the first time. The costumes from 1964, lost in a warehouse fire, are being rebuilt by the costume designer Ann Roth, an alumna of the shop of the fabled Ka rinska, who created the originals.

''Sewing machines didn't exist in the Elizabethan era,'' Ms. Roth said one Sunday this month, a working day. ''I'm trying very hard to make this look Elizabethan.''

And while the staging has been in the hands of Mr. Zeffirelli's frequent Met assistant David Kneuss, the master himself was always expected to put on the finishing touches.

But complications from hip-replacement surgery have been keeping Mr. Zeffirelli close to home for several months, and on Tuesday his trip was definitively canceled, to widespread disappointment. ''Don't expect too much from a revival,'' he had warned. ''It's like trying to recapture your youth. I don't think I'm essential except for giving the last few touches that were very important to Lenny and me, that time has erased. But the Met has kept a good record of our ideas.''

Those last few touches, informing every glance and gesture, have always distinguished Mr. Zeffirelli at his best, and he has not lost the art. In the mid-90's, he surprised Denyce Graves, renowned the world over as the willful Gypsy in Bizet's ''Carmen,'' with his interpretation of her part.